Thine Eyes Bleed
In The Wake Of Separation
7.7
One of the more unique bands on the block, Thine Eyes Bleed attack the melodic new wave of thrash genre with a comparatively strong effort. Featuring former Kittie guitarist Jeff Phillips, Acacia's old singer, Justin Wolfe, and none other than Tom Arraya's brother, Johnny Arraya on guitar, this Canadian group of ragtag misfits presents an interesting and, at times, challenging listen on In The Wake Of Separation. Touring with Kittie and Steve-O of Jackass seemed to earn them enough attention to cause Uranium.com to declare them "Best Underground Metal Band." Despite the presence of a few notable names and praise, I'm still skeptical as to whether it'll be enough to catapult them into the big leagues. Although they deserve whatever fame comes to them as far as I'm concerned.
While it's virtually impossible to escape some of the largely frowned-upon pitfalls, I'm truly impressed at how few there really are. I will say that the grating throaty yell, which remains largely appropriate for Thine Eyes Bleed's sound, gets a little monotonous due to the unvarying pitch. It's one continuous flatlined sound, which causes the band to fall flat just a little during one of their mathy and dissonant breakdowns. During the actual up-tempo thrashy parts however, the vocals are perfect. I suppose it's just that I'd like to hear just as much variety in all the instrumentation as there is in the guitar, which straddles the line between being just straightforward enough, and too experimental for some. On "Live To Die", the song winds down with ear-pleasing clean vocals placed over a slower and more melancholy part. Although this was exactly what I was looking for, something to break the album up, I'm actually really bothered that it ends so suddenly and has absolutely no lead-in to the next track - the moderately paced, "Corpse You Up". The sound just drops out, and instead of picking back up to something intense, it's too slow to bring back the enthusiasm. If anything, Thine Eyes Bleed's edge lies in the fact that they're able to play such typical thrashy melodies and beats and merge them with jutted and staggering sections - something vastly different from the usual chugging breakdowns inserted into this genre. Most of the songs feature something that's as engrossing to the casual listener as it is to the third year musician - the guy who simply listens for guitarwork on an album and nothing else. "Innocent Mind" has an unmistakable black/viking metal quality with its swaggering rhythms, quick full chord strumming, and staccato picking that ties the two together. I'm not going to lie to you here people, "Silver", which is their finest track, sounds like a mixture of Converge, Gorguts, and any slower material Crowpath has ever produced. It's simply fantastic, and I'd have to say if all of their songs were consistently this good, Thine Eyes Bleed would be my new favorite band.
Even though the whole record doesn't sound like that, the fact that they're able to create anything close to those other bands causes me to hand out a high recommendation and maintain a watchful eye on the fate of these gentlemen. This is good, and at times, real good. I'll wholeheartedly admit it. Not something I'd rush out to listen to, per se, because of the setbacks caused by the vocals and musical cliches, but in terms of current releases, In The Wake Of Separation is definitely something. This definitely kicks the shit out of nearly all the other bands attempting to fuse so many different styles together, mainly by retaining clear and defining influences which they always retreat back to.
